ROUTLEDGE HISTORICAL BIOGRAPHIES SERIES EDITOR: ROBERT PEARCE

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2 OLIVER CROMWELL In this concise and accessible new biography, Martyn Bennett examines the life of Oliver Cromwell one of the most controversial fi gures in world history. Elected to parliament in 1640 Cromwell played a major role in challenging the excessive powers of Charles I. As Lieutenant General, his military campaigns were crucial to victory during the Civil War and he was instrumental in the trial and execution of the king. As Lord Protector of the Commonwealth he remains the only non-royal head of state in British history. His rule was characterised by unprecedented religious freedoms and is seen as laying the foundations for the modern British constitution. However, Cromwell s legacy in Ireland and Scotland has greatly troubled his reputation. Furthermore, Cromwell s government is often viewed as an anomaly a temporary hiatus before the re-establishment of the monarchy. Martyn Bennett challenges these long-held perceptions of Cromwell and the Commonwealth, arguing that in his role as God s Constable, he needs to be placed at the core of early Modern British and Irish history. Charting his early career, the origins of his political and religious thought and the development of his notions of governance that influenced him as Lord Protector, Martyn Bennett contests the post-restoration vilifi cation of Cromwell to examine how his influence has shaped notions of citizenship, identity and governance and informed the relationship between religion and the state in Britain. This radical new interpretation will give students a clearer view of the motivations and achievements of a fascinating and pivotal fi gure in British history.

3 ROUTLEDGE HISTORICAL BIOGRAPHIES SERIES EDITOR: ROBERT PEARCE Routledge Historical Biographies provide engaging, readable and academically credible biographies written from an explicitly historical perspective. These concise and accessible accounts will bring important historical fi gures to life for students and general readers alike. In the same series Bismarck by Edgar Feuchtwanger Neville Chamberlin by Nick Smart Churchill by Robert Pearce Edward IV by Hannes Kleineke Gladstone by Michael Partridge Henry VII by Sean Cunningham Henry VIII by Lucy Wooding Hitler by Martyn Housden Jinnah by Sikander Hayat Lenin by Christopher Read Louis XIV by Richard Wilkinson Martin Luther King Jr. by Peter J. Ling Martin Luther by Michael Mullet Mary Queen of Scots by Retha M. Warnicke Mao by Michael Lynch Mussolini by Peter Neville Nehru by Ben Zachariah Emmeline Pankhurst by Paula Bartley Richard III by Ann Kettle Franklin D. Roosevelt by Stuart Kidd Stalin by Geoffrey Roberts Trotsky by Ian Thatcher Mary Tudor by Judith Richards

4 OLIVER CROMWELL Martyn Bennett

5 First published 2006 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business 2006 Martyn Bennett This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-library, To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge s collection of thousands of ebooks please go to All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bennett, Martyn. Oliver Cromwell / Martyn Bennett p. cm. (Routledge historical biographies) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Oliver Cromwell, Generals Great Britain Biography. 3. Heads of state Great Britain Biography. 4. Great Britain History Puritan Revolution, Biography. I. Title. II. Series DA426.B$^ dc ISBN10: (hbk) ISBN10: (pbk) ISBN10: x (ebk) ISBN13: (hbk) ISBN13: (pbk) ISBN13: (ebk)

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8 CONTENTS LIST OF PLATES ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS CHRONOLOGY VIII IX X 1 By birth a gentleman, A chief of sinners, A gentleman very ordinarily apparelled, My estate is little, The great agent in this victory, He did not openly profess what opinion he was of himself, I never in all my life saw more deep sense, Everyone must stand or fall by his own conscience, Oh, would I the wings like a dove, A good constable to keep the peace, Conclusion: my design is to make what haste I can to be gone 261 N OTES 273 FURTHER READING 281 INDEX 287

9 LIST OF PLATES (between pages 146 and 147) 1 Oliver Cromwell, aged 2 2 Cromwell s school, Huntingdon 3 Cromwell s home in Ely 4 Cromwell by Robert Walker 5 Parliament during Commonwealth 6 Cromwell dissolving parliament 7 Equestrian portrait 8 Cromwell s death mask

10 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Writing a biography is an experience quite different to experiences of writing that I have previously undertaken and so I would like to thank the readers who commented on my original proposal for the book for their suggestions, comments and guidance. I would like to thank Professor Ronald Hutton in particular for letting me see a pre-publication copy of his chapter on Cromwell from his Debates on Stuart History, it was enlightening and instructive. I must thank the staff of all record offi ces and libraries I have used in collating the material for the book, especially those at the Huntingdonshire Records Offi ce and also the staff of the Cromwell Museum who collaborated in securing access to the records displayed at the museum. I need also to thank my colleagues at Nottingham Trent University for their enthusiasm and willingness to have ideas tested out on them, and for reading parts of the book. My thanks also go to my thirdyears students over the past three years who have likewise had theories and ideas thought out with them. I must also thank the Graduate School administrators, in particular, Terry McSwiney, for the unfailing support that allowed me the space to devote time to this book. Finally, thank you to Deborah for enduring the presence of the ghost of a man over four hundred years old, stalking our house, sometimes at weird hours of the day.

11 CHRONOLOGY Personal events National events 1599 Oliver Cromwell born 25 April 29 April Oliver Cromwell baptised 1603 Death of Elizabeth I and succession of King James VI of Scotland to the crowns of England/Wales and Ireland 1616 Cromwell at Cambridge University 1617 Death of Oliver s father: Oliver left Cambridge August Oliver married Elizabeth Bourchier 1621 Son Robert born 1623 Son Oliver born 1624 Daughter Bridget born 1625 Death of James VI and I: succession of Charles I 1626 Son Richard born 1628 Cromwell elected to Parliament Son Henry born 1629 Daughter Elizabeth born Parliament dissolved 1630 Fishbourne bequest crisis, Cromwell loses position on Huntingdon crisis and leaves the town for St Ives 1632 Son James born, died same year Cromwell involved in parish management of St Ives

12 CHRONOLOGY xi Personal events National events 1636 On the death of Sir Thomas Steward the Cromwells moved to Ely 1637 Daughter Mary born Charles I s attempt to change the liturgy of Scotland provokes revolt 1638 Daughter Frances born st Bishop s War 1640 Cromwell elected to Short and Long Parliaments Charles I called Short Parliament. Defeat of the king s forces in the 2nd Bishop s War. Charles called Long Parliament May Root and Branch Bill introduced to parliament 22 October Irish Rebellion 27 November Grand Remonstrance 1642 August Cromwell raised a troop of Horse 23 October Battle of Edgehill May Battle of Belton July Cromwell became governor of Ely 20 July Battle of Gainsborough 20 September 1st Battle of Newbury 1644 January Cromwell appointed Lt General of the Eastern Association Army 5 February Signed the Solemn League and Covenant 7 February Appointed to the Committee of Both Kingdoms Scotland entered the war on the side of parliament

13 xii CHRONOLOGY Personal events National events 2 July Battle of Marston Moor 27 October 2nd Battle of Newbury November December 1645 January Conflict over army leadership leading to the Self-Denying Ordinance Creation of the New Model Army begun 14 June Battle of Naseby 10 July Battle of Langport 10 September Capture of Bristol 13 September Conclusive defeat of royalist forces in Scotland at the Battle of Philliphaugh 14 October Storm of Basing House January Marriage of daughter, Elizabeth to John Claypole 15 June Daughter Bridget married Henry Ireton 1647 Cromwell attempted to ameliorate differences between the army and parliament 4 June After meeting Cromwell, Cornet Joyce seized the king Heads of the Proposals presented to the king and rejected October November Cromwell chaired the Putney Debates End of First Civil War in England and Wales 11 November Charles I escaped from Hampton Court

14 CHRONOLOGY xiii Personal events National events 15 November Cromwell put down the Corkbush mutiny 1648 Vote of No Addresses May July Cromwell s campaign in Wales Fairfax on campaign in south-east England 17 August Battle of Preston October Cromwell in Scotland December Establishment of the process for the king s trial 1649 January Cromwell one of the king s judges and a signatory of the death warrant 30 January Execution of the king 15 August Cromwell landed in Ireland 11 September Storm of Drogheda 11 October Storm of Wexford 1650 February May Cromwell campaigning in south and midland Ireland June Appointed commander in chief July Beginning of campaign in Scotland 3 September Battle of Dunbar September Battle of Worcester 1652 Anglo-Dutch war April Cromwell expelled parliament 4 July Opening of Little Parliament

15 xiv CHRONOLOGY Personal events National events 12 December Little Parliament dissolved itself 16 December Cromwell became Lord Protector 1654 April End of Dutch War 4 September Opening of the First Protectorate Parliament November Death of Oliver s mother January Dissolution of Parliament March Penruddock s rising July Cromwell aware of the failure of the Western design in May 9 August Major Generals inaugurated September Second Protectorate Parliament 1657 February Proposals to make Cromwell a king in the Humble Petition and Advice presented to Cromwell 8 May Oliver refused the crown 26 June Cromwell reinstalled as Lord Protector under the terms of the Humble Petition November Marriages of Cromwell s daughters Frances and Elizabeth February Dissolution of Parliament 6 August Death of daughter Elizabeth 3 September Death of Cromwell

16 1 BY BIRTH A GENTLEMAN The novelist and biographer John Buchan, Lord Tweedsmuir, felt that Oliver had underplayed his origins. Cromwell once said I was by birth a gentleman, living neither in any considerable height nor yet in obscurity. Buchan suggested that he might have put the claim higher, because of his family s prominence in the region. Many biographers and historians across the past three and a half centuries have been mesmerised by Oliver s apparent rise from obscurity to prominence and national leadership. To some nineteenth century commentators, imbued with the virtues of Samuel Smiles s self-help mentality, Cromwell s self-made man image was irresistible. It still lingers in recent works, although over time historians have questioned it. Maurice Ashley stressed that the Cromwell family s status meant that the implication of obscurity is hard to justify. Yet it has almost become a commonplace in many ways to see Cromwell appearing as it were from nowhere. Several factors have been ascribed in this rise, a combination of his natural talents with the cataclysmic movements of class struggle unleashed by the revolutionary times, or to the rise of the puritans, with which Cromwell has been long associated. The notion of obscurity is a complex phenomenon with at least two facets appropriate to Cromwell s life. One facet is the aspect of being hidden or lost: this can be examined with regard to Cromwell s early life and development. A few of the usual records, those confirming birth and baptism exist, but there are few details of Oliver s childhood.

17 2 BY BIRTH A GENTLEMAN Yet familiar tales of Cromwell s early years abound. Stories of his being abducted by a monkey and carried onto his uncle s roof and of a punchup with the infant Prince Charles are well-known, as is the story that he was rescued from drowning by a local man who later in life regretted doing so having seen Oliver fighting against his king. There is also a story about him placing a stage-prop crown on his own head during a school play. It has to be said that these stories probably all had their origins much later in Oliver s life or even afterwards. Oliver himself left little record, contemporary or recalled in adulthood, of his intellectual or spiritual development, as indeed few people did or do. For someone who was to achieve such prominence this may seem a regrettable case of negligence, but the absence of such records even in such a family as his branch of the Cromwells is by no means unique. Obscurity too can refer to the social background of a person and this is also applied to Oliver Cromwell, and depends far more upon perspective. The progression from a gentry background to national leadership was dramatic. Clearly, to many who looked upon Cromwell whilst he was head of state, his rise must have been remarkable in a society in which even usurpers to the throne had at least tenuous claims to royal blood, and there were attempts to link Oliver through his mother s family to the deposed Stuarts. Yet to a far greater number of observers Oliver would not have been an outsider to the world of politics: for perhaps 95 per cent of the people in Oliver s world he would have been quite simply out of their class, gifted as he was by birth with property and social position which would entail political and administrative power and authority at some level. People like Oliver, even at his most lowly, organised and ran other people s lives, employed them, marshalled them in communal responsibilities, propelled them into court if necessary. Oliver, during the obscure parts of his life, played this role to the full: as a councillor at Huntingdon, he served as a borough justice of the peace; he may have been part of the rural administration in St Ives. As MP in the late 1620s he had a role in deciding the fate of taxpayers income and fiscal duties. It cannot be doubted that the political controversies of the 1630s and the civil wars which followed propelled Cromwell into the public arena. Yet here he was not alone; civil war companies, troops and even regiments of both sides were led by men originally of lesser standing than Oliver Cromwell even at his lowest. Many of these men sought to use the war to rise from obscurity. Colin Davis, in his thoughtful

18 BY BIRTH A GENTLEMAN 3 and thought provoking biography of Cromwell, underlined that rising to high political power was not unique, citing the cases of William Laud, the Archbishop of Canterbury who was the son of a draper, and a parliamentarian contemporary of Cromwell s, Major General Phillip Skippon, a working-class lad made good. Cromwell had two major advantages in his career: membership of the gentry and the revolution. The latter, when coupled with his instrumental involvement with the winning side, formed the background to his rise to power. It was this which distinguished him from many other contenders who had been on the starting line of As with all individuals who rise to prominence, Cromwell both shaped and was shaped by the times in which he lived. If Charles I had not had a contentious relationship with parliaments, there might have been no Personal Rule between 1629 and 1640 and Cromwell s life would have been very different. His career as an MP may have come to an end in 1629 because only shortly after that he lost his place as a burgess in Huntingdon, the town he represented in the Commons. With no Personal Rule, there would have been less need for his more powerful cousins and associates to place him in the Cambridge seat in 1640: he may never have represented Cambridge at all. Yet this counter-factual discussion has little value: the purpose of this chapter is to explore Cromwell s early life and set a context for it. Oliver Cromwell was born on 25 April 1599 the second, but eldest surviving son of Robert and Elizabeth Cromwell of Huntingdon, the county town of one of England s smallest counties. Unusually, and therefore somewhat suspiciously, his baptismal record in the register of St John the Baptist church, dated 29 April 1599, is in Latin (as is the following entry for Mary Wallis). 1 These are the only two Latin entries, all the other births, deaths and marriages within the parish are recorded in English. One other thing makes Cromwell s entry stand out: it includes the date of birth. All other entries simply record the date of baptism. It would seem clear that Oliver s record has been entered later, perhaps replacing the standard English language version made at the time of his baptism, which may have been pumiced out and written over like a palimpsest. The change may have been made during his lifetime, possibly whilst he was famous, and therefore it takes its place alongside the contemporary myth-making that generated stories of monkeys and fights. This near contemporary alteration was only part of a long-term process for the replacement of the entry was not the only bit of writing

19 4 BY BIRTH A GENTLEMAN on the page. Oliver s record is the first actual entry on the page, but Immediately above his entry, another person wrote Englands plague for five years. Yet another hand crossed that out. The page has been so heavily examined that the vellum is polished; at the centre of the fly, it is almost transparent. Whatever date Oliver s entry was re-written, back in 1599, he was one of six children baptised in the church. Unfortunately for those born in the same year as Oliver, with the exception of Mary Wallis, this interest in Oliver s birth has almost resulted in their entries being expunged from the record as arms rested on the lower half of the page have faded entries. Sadly this erasure is mirrored in the physical structure of Huntingdon, for St John s church was demolished in the mid-seventeenth century, probably during Cromwell s lifetime. The place of Oliver s birth has likewise gone. The present Cromwell House, a private clinic, is on the site of the family home but incorporates nothing of it. Heavy reconstruction before 1724 had changed the building dramatically, but had left the room where Cromwell had been born in place as a curiosity. By 1810 the last vestiges of the original building had gone. We are left with an intangible early life, which enables the myth of obscurity. Yet there are real structures into which the baby Cromwell fitted, which remove the obscuring veils. Robert, Oliver s father was not an obscure man, he was the son of Sir Henry Cromwell a star of Queen Elizabeth s court, who in turn was the son of one of her father s King Henry VIII s favourites. Robert had been an MP, a county high sheriff and now he was a county JP, as well as a bailiff in his home town of Huntingdon. Robert s elder brother Oliver, was even more prominent; he would in 1603 inherit the family s principal estates and would in turn become an associate of King James VI and I and the centre of the county s political and cultural milieu as Sir Oliver Cromwell resident in the nearby sumptuous house, Hinchingbrooke. Although at the time of his early children s baptisms Robert Cromwell was referred to as gentleman, a title applied in the Latin entry for Oliver s birth and baptism, he was, after his father s death in 1603, referred to as esquire at the baptism of Oliver s sister Elizabeth in Robert s elder brother Oliver on the other hand was referred to as esquire when his daughter Katherine was born in 1594, but he was soon elevated. Queen Elizabeth knighted him in 1598: and at King James s Westminster coronation Oliver was made a Knight of the Bath. Sir Henry s two eldest

20 BY BIRTH A GENTLEMAN 5 sons (he had five in total, four of whom survived into adulthood) served as MPs in Elizabethan parliaments, Robert just the once in Baby Oliver s mother Elizabeth was a member of the Steward family; a family of successful gentlemen who farmed land belonging to Ely cathedral. Her brother Thomas took over the lands after their father s death. Both the Stewards and the Cromwells had benefited from the sixteenth century s cataclysmic social restructuring attendant upon Henry VIII s break from the Roman Catholic church. The two families were able to take advantage of the break-up of the church s estates, buying into the massive property market and deriving increased wealth and status as a result. Elizabeth had married John Lynne of Bassingbourn in the 1580s, but he and their baby daughter Katherine had died by 1589 and were buried in Ely Cathedral. Into her second marriage Elizabeth took a jointure worth 60 a year and a small brewery. At Oliver Cromwell s birth Robert and Elizabeth lived on the site of the Friary on the High Street, bought by Sir Henry Cromwell in Four years later it was still referred to as the Fryers, even though it was over thirty years since it had been closed down. On one side there was a common drain and on the other Friar Lane. Sir Henry gave the site to Robert who turned it into a building site, which when work was over revealed the family home in which Oliver would be born. 2 Christopher Hill believed that this gave the Cromwells a vested secular interest in the Reformation: the Cromwells Protestantism was tinged with a realistic materialism. Any restoration of Catholicism would undo their fortunes, even if some of those fortunes were relatively meagre. Robert Cromwell was not a wealthy man, the estates which he was given brought him an income of about 300 a year. This was not a remarkable amount for members of the gentry; being about the average income for a lesser gentleman, but for an esquire who was expected to be a public role, it was low. It would seem to be the case, that Robert Cromwell was not amongst those gentry who increased their wealth during the pre-civil war period through estate improvement or office holding. In Huntingdonshire the numbers of the gentry seem to have declined during the seventeenth century: certainly Robert s failure to improve his income between the 1590s and his death in 1617, put his nuclear family at risk. They could have become what Hugh Trevor-Roper classified as declining mere-gentry. 3 Nevertheless, 300 a year was an unimaginable sum for the vast majority of Oliver s contemporaries, sixty

21 6 BY BIRTH A GENTLEMAN times what a ploughman could earn by the sweat of his brows in a year, and Robert did not need to sweat a drop through physical exertion to earn it. Other people earned the Cromwells income. Oliver was the fifth of the Cromwell children, Joan was the eldest, but died before she was ten, then followed Elizabeth, the only girl baptised at St John s that year on 14 October Oliver s elder brother Henry died at some time during his childhood, having been baptised on 31 August Katheren was born in early 1597 and Oliver himself a couple of years later. He was in turn followed by Margaret in 1601, Anna in 1602, Jane in January 1605, Robina some years later and finally by Robert, who was born in January 1609: he was buried on 4 April. 4 Oliver and his young siblings were fortunate children. In 1603 plague struck Huntingdon. Most of the casualties recorded at St John s, opposite the Cromwell s home, were adults. The Cromwell family remained intact. It seems unlikely that Oliver s elder brother died in these years, the plague deaths are welldocumented, although we do not know when the boy did die. In terms of the fortunes of the Cromwell family as a whole Oliver was born just as the upward trajectory slowed. In the sixteenth century the Cromwells had appeared not from obscurity, but from Wales. With a surname of Williams, Cromwell s ancestors had prospered in the reign of Henry VII. Morgan Williams married Katherine Cromwell, sister of Henry VIII s future chief minister Thomas Cromwell. Their son Richard also married well, gaining ownership of property in Cambridgeshire through his marriage to Frances Murfyn daughter of a Lord Mayor of London. Richard worked with his uncle as a regional commissioner in charge of the dissolution of local monasteries, and served as high sheriff of Huntingdonshire and Cambridgeshire. The dissolution was profitable and Richard s reputation survived the disgrace and execution of Uncle Thomas. Former church property was bought in Huntingdonshire, including Hinchingbrooke Nunnery and Ramsey Abbey, as well as the smaller Augustine Friary in Huntingdon and a couple of priories at St Neots and Huntingdon and another abbey at Sawtry. Richard Williams had during his rise (and before his uncle s fall) adopted the surname Cromwell. This became the family name thereafter, but legal documents continued to bear the name Williams as well. Oliver Cromwell himself was styled Cromwell alias Williams as late as Richard and Frances s first son Henry was born in 1537 and seven years later he inherited the property. Fortunately his experience of wardship was a happy one and

22 BY BIRTH A GENTLEMAN 7 his proprietorial guardian Sir Edward North managed the estates well. Henry married Joan Warren, daughter of a Lord Mayor of London, like his mother. Once again marrying into a wealthy business family brought a large financial benefit to the Cromwell family. Hinchingbrooke Nunnery was demolished and an impressive lavish home was constructed and the gateway of Ramsay Abbey dismantled, the stones were shipped to Hinchingbrooke and rebuilt as the grand entrance to the new home. Henry entertained Queen Elizabeth there in 1564, where she knighted him. The family fortune was spent generously on such entertainments, and Sir Henry gained the nickname The Golden Knight. Henry and Joan had a large family: five boys, of whom four survived into adulthood, and five daughters. Two of the daughters marriages produced men with a role in Oliver s future. Elizabeth married John Hampden and their son John became the future ship money protestor and politician. Frances married Richard Whalley whose son Edward by his first marriage would be one of the major generals in the 1650s. This pattern continued; Sir Henry s granddaughter Elizabeth married Oliver St John, the man who defended John Hampden when he was prosecuted for not paying ship money. Oliver was therefore by birth tied into the leaders of the revolution. Yet we must not read too much into this, for Cromwell was also tied into the families which supported the king s cause too. His extended family included Thomas, Lord Cromwell who would become a royalist administrator during the civil war. A cousin, son of Uncle Sir Oliver, worked for Charles I s sister Elizabeth Queen of Bohemia. A halfcousin from the same branch of the family, James, would fight for Charles I as a colonel. Another, Henry, descended from Uncle Sir Phillip would also become a royalist colonel as would his brother Thomas (although he married in to the Leicestershire Dixie family after the wars; they were parliamentarians). The young Oliver was not a parliamentarian-inwaiting in his childhood, he was a part of a broad network of family and social class which would participate in the wars because of their birth and connections. It must be remembered that the royalist Cromwell would have had the same vested economic interest in the survival of Protestantism as Oliver. If the origins of the family wealth made the Cromwells Protestant, it certainly did not make them parliamentarians. David Smith and Peter Newman have both shown us that royalists were adherents of the established state church and the property redistribution of the sixteenth century which had created it.

23 8 BY BIRTH A GENTLEMAN Cromwell s cocoon was class based, but not unique to his class. Indeed there is a suggestion that there was already in place horizontal stratification of the class system. The family contacts which would work for Oliver Cromwell throughout his life were within the gentry. Through the gentry he would gain his political office, his administrative and legal appointments and the basis of his family wealth. This is not to say that this was a rigid structure: the entry into the gentry of his maternal relations and the maternal relations of his ancestors proved that the access to the gentry was possible, and Cromwell s own economic decline in the early 1630s, proved that it was possible to fall out of it too. Uncle Oliver s failing fortunes showed that there was room to rise and fall within the gentry cadre too; indeed because his fall was related to his court ambitions, he fits, like his father, into Hugh Trevor-Roper s category of falling gentry : those who invested their family wealth into maintaining a social position, which in the end brought no economic or financial return. Such a cocoon was not unique to the gentry: recent work on credit and community structure shows that other classes of early modern men and women had networks of their own which functioned in the same way. Cromwell s family and connections do not therefore make the unique man, but they explain the way his life functioned in those first forty years of his life. The large family and generous spirit of grandfather Sir Henry was beginning to stretch the family fortune yet his sons and daughters married well, but not as spectacularly as Sir Henry or his father Sir Richard. The apex of the family s success lay in the years before Oliver s birth and in his youth, when his father and uncle Oliver served as MPs in Elizabethan parliaments and upon her death, when James VI and I, Queen Elizabeth s successor, visited Hinchingbrooke just a couple of months after he came to the throne of England. In the short term, this visit, the first of many, paid dividends. Uncle Oliver was knighted. He became a creditor to the crown and as a result received grants of lands. In the long term, entertaining the monarch began to cost more than it returned. Grandfather Henry died shortly after his queen, and the post of royal entertainer passed to Sir Oliver. Lavish entertainment began to sap the family resources, but during Oliver s childhood, there would be no outward sign that the apex of the family had been reached and passed. Unlike the rising upper gentry and aristocracy, which Lawrence Stone 6 identified in the early seventeenth century, the Cromwells were

24 BY BIRTH A GENTLEMAN 9 on the way down, largely through an association with the court that entailed a greater outlay than income. Cromwell s immediate and extended family smoothed his passage through early life, securing him a comfortable childhood, good schooling at the nearby grammar school and a place at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge University. In later life, the fall of the family would mirror and contribute to Cromwell s own decline in fortunes, but later still it would drag him back from rural obscurity and place him again into parliament. Much of this network of support would be in place before Cromwell was born, the rest was assembled in his youth and early manhood, and he continued the process as he matured and married. At its heart was the Cromwell family, centred at once in the old friary with Oliver s mother and father, but also at Hinchingbrooke the home of Sir Oliver. This part of the network was to fail the young Cromwell, the heart of the family sustained a shock in 1617 when Robert died, but the wider circle went into financial and thereby influential decline by the 1620s. Cromwell s economic and social resurgence was related to another circle, that of his wife. Political resurgence was owed however to the links made by the Cromwells. As yet of course all of this was to play out in Oliver s future but the foundations appeared contemporary with the most obscure years of Cromwell s life. His Aunt Elizabeth had married John Hampden, cousin Elizabeth was married to Oliver St John, sister Margaret married Valentine Walton, a local gentleman and future deputy lieutenant for the county. All would play a part in the young man s future. There would of course be a range of other influences within the British Isles and Europe which would impinge upon Cromwell s life. The religious and political world was shifting throughout his early years, England for example was at the centre of changing relationships within the British Isles. As the Williams-Cromwell family continued to rise in the world during the Reformation England and Wales, their home country, were unified. By the time Oliver was born the union was in its seventh decade and well-established. On the other hand, England s imperial ambitions in Ireland were not quite as successful. The monarch s authority had increased from the Pale the Leinster based English administration and other pockets of English control around major market towns and ports since the 1530s but major rebellions in the 1580s and 1590s demonstrated serious weakness in England s power.

25 10 BY BIRTH A GENTLEMAN In 1599 the O Neill, Hugh O Neill, Earl of Tyrone and his principal ally Hugh O Donnell, Earl of Tyrconnell dominated the north of Ireland and defied Queen Elizabeth s Dublin-based administration. Within a few years of Cromwell s birth the situation changed dramatically. The succession to the thrones of England/Wales and Ireland of the Scots king James VI brought a new impetus to the imperial processes at work. In the last years of her reign Elizabeth s forces had defeated O Neill at Battle of Kinsale and driven him into hiding. Peace was achieved as James came to the throne, and by 1607, with the flight of the two earls from Ireland, complete control of Ireland was effectively achieved. But James had brought with him a design to fully unify England/Wales and Scotland, and he had himself proclaimed king of Great Britain. This part of the plan proved easier than creating a political union between the two nations. The English/Welsh parliament proved unwilling to enact an equal union with a nation which it long perceived as inferior and in Scotland there was a fear that England, with its superior economic power, would dominate any union. For most of Oliver s life, the union remained partial, with both nations maintaining independent governments and parliaments, united in the figure of the king, first James VI and I and then Charles I. It was Charles s attempts to alter the relationship between the churches of the two nations which precipitated the crisis which threw Cromwell onto the national stage. During Cromwell s later life the relationships between the three kingdoms became central to his life. Cromwell s environment was the bustling town of Huntingdon. This is still a small town, marred by a horrible set of modern roads, which coupled with the rail line, severs the direct route to Hinchingbrooke in a savage way. Huntingdon is pretty, despite some ugly modern building lurking behind the genteel eighteenth century frontages. Although no towns are left behind by the centuries through which they pass, some might mistake Huntingdon for a laggard. This would seriously underplay its role in the world. In the seventeenth century it was a prosperous town surrounded by a prosperous champaign. Moreover, it was on the main road leading to and from London, the route between the capitals of King James s two main kingdoms. It was also close to one of the two universities in England. The Huntingdon of Cromwell s childhood is perhaps deceptively familiar. The road layout of the part of the town which embraced Cromwell s world is almost the same as it was at the beginning of the seventeenth century. The boundaries of the

26 BY BIRTH A GENTLEMAN 11 shops detectable in the town survey of 1572 and on Speed s 1610 map seem to have been preserved by the later buildings constructed on their plots. It was a modernising town, as commercial, educational and private concerns replaced the religious houses and their properties. Oliver s Huntingdon was concentrated at the north-west end of the town. The family house stood on High Street, next to a drain. Across the road was St John the Baptist church. Further south down the High Street was the school. Had Oliver taken a right-turn just before reaching his school along the side of All Hallowes or All Saints church along what has been George Street since the eighteenth century, but was known as St Georges then, he could have walked a mile or so to Uncle (Sir) Oliver s home. As a young lad Oliver went to school, just a hundred yards or so from his house, underlining the close world in which he lived and grew up. The school, like Robert and Elizabeth s house, owed its existence to the Reformation, being established in the buildings once occupied by the Hospital of St John the Baptist, and remained closely linked to the church where Oliver was baptised, for the head teacher, Thomas Beard was also the minister of the church. The role of Beard in Oliver s education has been the subject of much speculation. Much of this speculation has centred upon Beard s religious perspective. As with much of Cromwell s history, a good deal about Beard was read backwards. Starting from the assumption that Cromwell must have imbibed his later puritanism somewhere, Beard became a distinct possibility. He taught Cromwell at school on weekdays and from 1610 preached at him on a Sunday. The connection seems clear; but it depends much upon Beard being identified as a puritan himself. As John Morrill has convincingly shown, this identification is now in doubt. Seven years before he took up his place as minister and teacher at Huntingdon, Dr Thomas Beard had published a book, The Theatre of God s Judgement, in which he demonstrated himself to be a providentialist, amongst other things. There is certainly something in this which would appear to link the text with Oliver for Cromwell would later show himself to be a providentialist, believing that God s plan for humanity could be discerned by observing closely the course of worldly events. Yet in attempts to encapsulate Cromwell s religious outlook, historians from a wide spectrum of thought, including Christopher Hill and Maurice Ashley and even John Buchan, have conjoined Beard s providentialism with a dislike of the structured religion of a state church. If this were

27 12 BY BIRTH A GENTLEMAN the case, it would tie in with what Colin Davis has called Cromwell s antiformalist providentialism, combining distrust of a single formalised national church with the belief that god was instrumental in everyday life. The question of Beard s influence on Cromwell turns upon a question could Beard be described as one of the Godly, potentially a separatist? The answer given by recent examinations appears to be no. Beard was able to work easily within the regime as it existed in James VI and I s reign, and more importantly within the changing religious regime of Charles I. Beard did believe the pope was the antichrist, something which Charles s Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud and his ilk, did not, preferring to see the head of the Roman Catholic faith as an erring brother; but even this would not automatically make Beard a puritan or separatist. John Morrill has presented him as a greedy pluralist who lived in great comfort with income derived from a number of posts. In Huntingdon alone he held the living of All Hallowes (All Saints), and then St John s. He also held the mastership of both the school and the hospital. Until he took up the post at St John s he also was the absentee incumbent of Kimbolton. In 1612 he gained a prebend s chair at Lincoln Cathedral, increasing his income yet again. Beard was distinctly un-puritan in another way too: he played a full, and later acrimonious, role in the civil government of the town. Beard was not the source of Cromwell s puritanism. It is far safer to assume that Beard was influential only in a general sense: Cromwell s religious awakening was probably located later in life, and it may have been more closely associated with his social and temporary mental problems in his late twenties, than with his school life. Within the Huntingdon Free Grammar School, which unusually for buildings associated with the young Oliver, still exists in part (it is the Cromwell Museum), Master Cromwell studied the liberal arts programme of early Stuart England, largely unchanged from that imbibed by his father. This would be the old trivium, consisting of Latin, grammar and rhetoric, subjects based in the classics which served as a preparation for the quadrivium, that would be studied at university. If he was lucky there would have been a chance to study other things, Greek, Hebrew, French, Italian and perhaps even music. Later commentators suggested that he had a fairly lax attitude to schooling. Cromwell is said to have been something of a naughty boy, stealing apples, playing the rough games of boyhood. It was claimed that he read little, but again this may

28 BY BIRTH A GENTLEMAN 13 be the product of later imaginations, as we know he enjoyed Sir Walter Raleigh s History of the World, published in 1614 whilst Oliver was still at school. Cromwell s Latin, a mainstay of a gentleman s education, was sometimes referred to as weak, but on the other hand he seemed adept at using it as a means of communication with foreign diplomats later in life. In short though, we do not know what Cromwell did at school. The tick-box mentality of examination-dominated twenty-first century education has no seventeenth century parallel from which we could derive a statistical impression of the boy s attainments, nor do end of term reports exist to provide us with Beard s impression of his pupil. We are left with the impressions of people who were not present or who were not contemporaries of Oliver. Having had our collective fingers burned over Beard s puritan influence, it is best to stay clear of unfounded speculation. That Cromwell went on to university offers little guide either. It was a social, political and economic decision, rather than an educational one. Cromwell followed his uncle and father to Cambridge, but not to their college, Queens, instead he went to Sidney Sussex College on 23 April 1616: it was the day William Shakespeare died. 7 Two days later Oliver Cromwell was seventeen years old. Cromwell s status was that of one of the dozen gentlemen commoners. He would pay fees and eat in the common hall. He was not a scholarship boy and he would not be in the ignominious position of having to double as a college servant. This would have eaten into the family s income considerably; it has been estimated that it cost between 30 and 50 a year to be a student. Oliver Cromwell was enrolled under a tutor, Richard Howlet. Sidney Sussex had a growing reputation for puritan scholarship. The college had been founded by the Montagu family, which was closely associated with the Cromwells as it was also located in Huntingdonshire and moved in the same circles of power and influence. The master of the college was Dr Samuel Ward who was a determined Calvinist, convinced of the essential truth of predestination. To Ward there was no salvation to be expected other than that predicated by God at the world s creation. No good works, no amount of prayer and certainly no intercession by saints could impinge upon one s election or damnation. This was certainly a more promising environment in which the young Cromwell could imbibe a puritan outlook. The purpose of university education is the subject of much discussion. It has been claimed that they performed the function of a finishing school and the formal education played a less-important

29 14 BY BIRTH A GENTLEMAN role than the socialising between the young gentleman and the extracurricular activities, such as music and dancing, fencing and hunting. On the other hand, as Felicity Heal and Clive Holmes have reminded us, we must not overstate this centrality of the socialisation process at the expense of education: members of the gentry themselves viewed the courses followed as important to establish themselves as cultured and intellectual men. 8 Of course there was time for more raucous activities, often centred around alcoholic drinks. Some things do not change. Yet, because Cromwell left no comprehensive account of his education, we are only able to speculate about his education. His later love of music and dance may have been cultivated at university as it was for many of us. In any case Oliver s time at the university was destined to be short.

30 FURTHER READING The importance of Cromwell s contribution to British and Irish History means that there are a wide range of books about him to suit every line of enquiry: his politics; his personal life; his religion; his campaigns in Ireland and of course his military campaigns and ability. There is a mixed collection of primary sources for his life, many of which are referred to in the notes to the chapters in this book, but it is worth referring to them again. Huntingdonshire County Record Office in Huntingdon is very near Oliver s old school and in conjunction with it in its role as the Cromwell Museum and other institutions in the county, provides an internet site containing a calendar of documents relating to Cromwell s life and details of how and where to gain access to them: uk/leisure/archives/projects/cromwellcollection.htm. The central source for Cromwell remains his letters and records of his speeches, and these have been published a number of times. The largest collection is Abbott, Wilbur Cortez (ed.) Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, Four Volumes (Harvard College, ) reissued (Oxford University Press, 1989); a major collection, but not without its errors of transcription. A smaller, but nevertheless reasonable extensive collection readily available in second-hand bookshops is Carlyle, Thomas (ed.) Cromwell s Letters (Oxford, Ward Locke and Co, no date). This is one of several versions printed in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Again there are problems with the text and the editor s interpretation on occasion; but these are small problems when compared with Carlyle s annoying interventions and railings against his imaginary dullard of an historian Dryasdust. Ivan Roots has put together a collection of Oliver s speeches; Roots, Ivan (ed.) Speeches of Oliver Cromwell (London, Dent, 1989), which offers a modern and instructive record of Oliver s public utterances. There are a number of great and useful biographies of Oliver, dealing with him from a range of perspectives. Fraser, Antonia, Cromwell Our

31 282 FURTHER READING Chief of Men (London, Methuen, 1973, reprinted 1985) is useful for a very personal approach and remains a source of fascinating information, the main pitfall being that the book becomes less useful the further from the central subject the author ventures. In recent times three authors have produced very useful explorations of Cromwell: Coward, Barry, Oliver Cromwell (Harlow, Longman, 2000); Davis, J.C., Oliver Cromwell (London, Arnold, 2001) and Peter Gaunt s Oliver Cromwell (Oxford, Blackwell, 1995) all offer different and valuable interpretations of Oliver s life. Peter Gaunt s book is a straightforward biography analysing Cromwell as his life progresses, whilst both Davis and Coward have adopted an analytical approach throughout, with Davis choosing a thematic approach rather than a chronological one. Older biographies can also still present interesting insights, Maurice Ashley s Oliver Cromwell and the Puritan Revolution (London, English Universities Press), remains an incisive brief history and Charles Firth s Oliver Cromwell and the Rule of the Puritans in England, first published in 1900 (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1953); still has something to offer, whilst John Buchan s Oliver Cromwell (London, The Reprint Society, 1941), is an entertaining read. Christopher Hill s God s Englishman, Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1970) is perhaps dated somewhat, but the approach is still contentious and vibrant. There are few attempts to examine Cromwell s early life in isolation, and one is thrown back on the complete biographies, usually. John Morrill s essay The making of Oliver Cromwell in Professor Morrill s edited volume, Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution (Harlow, Longman, 1990), is an outstanding exception, cutting through myth and succeeding in creating a realistic image of the unnoticed Cromwell. Another essay that serves a similar myth-busting purpose is Brian Quintrell s Oliver Cromwell and the Distraint of Knighthood in the Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research (57, 1984). Books that deal with particular aspects of Cromwell s life include Frank Kitson s Old Ironsides (London, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 2004), a perceptive attempt to explore the nature of Cromwell s military genius and to ask questions such as how good a general was he and where did he learn his military craft from? Robert S. Paul in The Lord Protector: Religion and Politics in the Life of Oliver Cromwell (Grand Rapids, MI, William B. Eerdmans, 1955), looks at the other major theses of Oliver s life. Roy Sherwood s two works The Court of Oliver Cromwell (Stroud,